WI Roman and Chinese Industrial Revolution?

You forgot three things there

-What you call a state in Europe can be really messy if you look at the actual power : feudal principalities instead of kingdoms. But even with that, I would quote the failed Commune of Laon as an exemple on how the royal power could put an end to merchant's ambitions.

-The struggles between merchants that tend to limit bourgeois powers, by giving ideological weapons to their opponent, or by going to war themselves

-The bourgeois tended to be integrated into feudal elite in 5 generations : you had a relativly chaotic merchant class, when it was more stable in China in this regard.
1) Right. I'm using state in absence of a better term for "national" (royal, usually) level power. And while yes, royal power could do it, it usually didn't - either lack of interest or lack of ability or both.

2) Limit, but not eliminate.

3) There's that, but that might actually be a good thing in some ways.

Titus_Pullo said:
Lastly, you seem to disagree with the fact that there was a surplus of labor in China at the period in question, because they were all too busy cultivating rice. Unless I'm mistaken, from which source are you basing this assumption on, when sources I've read say just the oposite?


"The heavy application of manpower and fertilizer to small plots of land has also had its social repercussions, for it sets up a vicious interdependence between dense population and intensive use of the soil whereby each makes the other possible. A dense population provides both the incentive of for intensive land use and the menas. Once established,t his economy acquired intertial momentum - it kept on going. The back breaking labor of many hands became the accepted norm, and inventive efforts at labor saving became the exception. . . . " (page 16)

"Rice was able to supply more calories per unit of land than any other crop, making it the staff of life in China from Song times onward. Btu it is indeed labor intensive.

Consider, for example, the extra labor required toadd another terrace on top of several already in use - the physical effort in climbing the terraces to prepare teh new top field, to bring up seedlings for transplatnting, to adjust the flow of irrigation, to carry up and apply fertilizer, to monitor, weed, and finally hand-harvest the crop. Kang Chao (1986) estimates that in China's labor-intensive farming system, labor imput into a unit of land may be 10 to 20 times the labor input usual in extensive plow cultivation elsewhere." (page 170-171)

China: A New History (Second Enlarged Edition)

Where, then, is the surplus labor not tied to the land to maximize the output of rice coming from? Diminishing returns are still returns.

Which book are you quoting, by the way?

The same bias existed in Europe in the Middle Ages over land owning over commerce. That's why I don't agree with the religion theory as hampering Chinese progress when equally anti-progressive sentiments can be made of Judeo-Christian tradition. I was simply stating another more practical reason why merchants were despised in China.
I don't know about anyone else, but to me, the problem has far less to do with religion being more or less favorable and far more about the stronger influence of the anti-commercial attitudes. The Church in Europe was far less able to influence the marketplace than the Confucian bureaucracy was in China. Not less inclined, but less able.

There's also a decent discussion on how the economic factors in place in China render things just plain impractical (in the book I quoted), but it goes back to the need to squeeze every drop of productivity out of land area, and the farmer not being able do much beyond a pretty minimal subsistence.
 
Last edited:

Titus_Pullo

Banned
"The heavy application of manpower and fertilizer to small plots of land has also had its social repercussions, for it sets up a vicious interdependence between dense population and intensive use of the soil whereby each makes the other possible. A dense population provides both the incentive of for intensive land use and the menas. Once established,t his economy acquired intertial momentum - it kept on going. The back breaking labor of many hands became the accepted norm, and inventive efforts at labor saving became the exception. . . . " (page 16)

This statement basically just summarizes what I've been trying to say. It gives yet another reason for China's population increase and the efficiency of its food production as a contributing factor for it high level equilibrium trap. China's ability to apply heavy amounts of manpower to all available arable plots of land represents the functional relationship between labor output indicating the efficiency of the production process. The more food you produce, population will increase to the point that existing agricultural techniques and practices will just satisfy subsistence needs. Hence the resulting increase in population resulted in China's surplus labor in other areas from which for instance, furniture makers and cotton cloth manufacturers can cheaply draw from given their abundance. The resulting increased population put so much pressure on resources, particularly the land, that this surplus of people became cheap laborers in cotton mills. As a direct consequence to this abundance of surplus labor, All spinning in China reverted to far less efficient hand-spinning, and the automatic spinning wheel eventually fell into disuse. this pattern repeated all over China in other manufacturing areas that it retarded industrial innovation in the long run.

Besides how do you think the Ming managed to build their huge naval fleet, and how else could Kublai Khan have completed his ambitious public works projects like the rebuilding of the Grand Canal if it wasn't for this surplus labor population?
 
Last edited:



Besides how do you think the Ming managed to build their huge naval fleet, and how else could Kublai Khan have completed his ambitious public works projects like the rebuilding of the Grand Canal if it wasn't for this surplus labor population?

Conscription?

I would point out that you're slightly wrong. I know during the Song that the introduction of new growing techniques and new strains of rice allowed cultivation to increase too. It wasn't just a matter of cultivating new areas, though that certainly contributed.

But I think you're demonstrating the problem that would face your Chinese industrialization scenario. If agriculture and farming produces enough wealth, then change it? Are you suggesting that China become less efficient in terms of food production? Geography seems to be a problem then. Unlike Great Britain, China doesn't need foreign markets for imports and exports (much), and it does lack surplus labor in one sense. I know in Britain, when agricultural efficiency went up, people went to the cities, and I think in China, when agricultural efficiency went up, people just cultivated more land. Perhaps, for this scenario, a select Chinese state, in some initially remote part of China, during one of the period of fragmentation, might be short on land but high on productivity, thus forcing people into the cities. It's not a great scenario, but it's a start.
 
Conscription?

I would point out that you're slightly wrong. I know during the Song that the introduction of new growing techniques and new strains of rice allowed cultivation to increase too. It wasn't just a matter of cultivating new areas, though that certainly contributed.

But I think you're demonstrating the problem that would face your Chinese industrialization scenario. If agriculture and farming produces enough wealth, then change it? Are you suggesting that China become less efficient in terms of food production? Geography seems to be a problem then. Unlike Great Britain, China doesn't need foreign markets for imports and exports (much), and it does lack surplus labor in one sense. I know in Britain, when agricultural efficiency went up, people went to the cities, and I think in China, when agricultural efficiency went up, people just cultivated more land. Perhaps, for this scenario, a select Chinese state, in some initially remote part of China, during one of the period of fragmentation, might be short on land but high on productivity, thus forcing people into the cities. It's not a great scenario, but it's a start.

This. All of this.

China's problem isn't being too efficient, China's problem is overpopulation relative to production.
 

Titus_Pullo

Banned
I would point out that you're slightly wrong. I know during the Song that the introduction of new growing techniques and new strains of rice allowed cultivation to increase too.

At what point exactly did I say that cultivation decreased?? On the contrary I said that cultivation had increased to the point that by the 1600s "all arable lands were already under cultivation."



think in China, when agricultural efficiency went up, people just cultivated more land.

Actually no, the same was true in China. Keep in mind that increased population meant added pressure on land. As I stated earlier by the 1600's all arable lands in China was already under cultivation. That means an increase of peasant labor with nothing to do moved to the cities increasing the size of Chinese urban centers in the late imperial period. Many of them found themselves in the army during wartime, then turning to banditry in peacetime and often as we see in Chinese history, engaging in revolt after revolt. This surplus population flooded China's non agricultural manufacturing base to the point that this increase of non agricultural surplus population cheapened labor wages which again as already stated killed any desire at more efficient manufacturing innovation. You're correct on one point, China had less need of foreign markets because it had enough of its own markets to support the businesses, thus businesses did not see the need to streamline their operations and this had to do with a surplus in non agricultural labor. Simply put China was too big with too many people. This can be fixed if perhaps early China was less sucessful in uniting the various warring states resulting in a balkanized China. Which to me is doable and I'm sure its been proposed here before.
 
Last edited:
Where is the surplus of labor when rice agriculture is so labor-intensive? Not just large numbers of people, but large numbers of people who would be flooding the cities in search of work?
But they did. In fact, they continued to stream outwards to the hinterlands whenever possible, to eek out a living on sandy mountains growing some of those new-fangled crops imported from the Americas (like yams, potatoes, and tomatoes). These crops are not sustainable in the long run, mind, and resulted in what became a major ecological disaster for China in general, but moreover exacerbated the problem of a booming population as arable land itself became scarcer and scarcer (and yes, overflowing the workload that even traditionally labor-intensive rice cultivation in the south could maintain).

What this lead to was increasing growth of the cities, and also of the development of a growing underclass of beggars, wandering monks (indeed, to the point where most monasteries could no longer feed all the new supplicants), and vagrants (during the reign of Qianlong, we had the "Soulstealers" scare which derived from these social conditions itself). We also see a trend of downward mobility during this time period.

This isn't about total population, this is about having a population that is not (in practice, whether true in law or not) tied to the land scratching out a living.
But the population wasn't tied to the land. In the period in question (17-18th century Qing dynasty), the peasantry had been emancipated (though similar to what happened in the south, they remained as sharecroppers) by the Manchus (all classes below the Banners were free and equal, though social status is still enforced).

The idea that trade networks in China were so well developed that supply and demand imbalances didn't exist just doesn't make sense, either.
It does, however. Given just how economically integrated the Chinese economy was at the time, it would indeed become difficult for industrialization to take place, given the profundity and intense competition already present in a vibrant, nationwide cottage industry.

Yeah, nothing whatsoever to do with Confucian principles or the bias for land owning over commerce or anything. That influence over laws sounds pretty much exactly like the kind of influence you could see by merchants in Europe, just with a stronger autocratic bureaucracy to back it up.
The bias against merchants is often stated but you're oversimplifying things. Merchants can, without question, wield significant power in society despite their position as an unvirtuous caste of money-grubbers. If you want a literary example, read the Jing Ping Mei for a Ming outlook on merchants, corruption, and social power.

Moreover, the bureaucracy isn't really characterized by autocracy. Indeed, if anything, the bureaucracy served as the restraint on the arbitrary powers of the emperor (such that many emperors were effectively rendered powerless by their advisers and bureaucrats). The Manchus instituted numerous reforms in an effort to take back some power from the bureaucracy for themselves. That being said, the inertia, inefficiency, and corruption in the system in and of itself served to keep the emperor in check (and in some ways, you can characterize the early 2/3rds or more of the 20th century in China as a lack of such a restraint upon the arbitrary powers of the leader).

At this point, merchants are despised certainly, but that isn't really the reason why there is a lack of industrialization in China proper (indeed, this Confucian distrust of merchants hasn't realistically translated into any definitive policies or factors which would otherwise diminish or prevent industrialization). Certainly, everyone wanted to become an official, but the pass rates on these exams, by the time of the Qing, had become precipitously low (<5% on even the lowest level exams) due to a shortage of positions that it isn't really an issue of there being a lack of talent outside of government (indeed, it can be said the pass rates on the exams created a surplus of frustrated ambition outside of government, which lead to such events like Taiping).

The real issue with industrialization during the Qing is as Tito pointed out: the extreme surplus of labor in cities, in rice plantations, and all over; while the trade networks that connected China were indeed extremely efficient, the main reason is that the tremendous population surplus makes industrialization completely irrelevant (since there's no need to improve efficiency: unlike Great Britain, China doesn't have an India to hold as a captive market and force all the surplus goods down into for wealth). Economically, China was experiencing a massive inflow of silver from around the world (from Ming times up until the introduction of Opium).

Now, if we're talking about Han, Northern/Southern Dynasties, Tang, and Song times, then you might, because such a population pressure doesn't exist (indeed, during the Han, you won't even see any rice cultivation as the South is considered to be dangerous, barbaric lands filled with swamps, cannibals, and wilderness). But you're asking for a classical/post-classical industrial revolution and all that entails, as well as the difficulties of it.
 
Last edited:
[
What this lead to was increasing growth of the cities, and also of the development of a growing underclass of beggars, wandering monks (indeed, to the point where most monasteries could no longer feed all the new supplicants), and vagrants (during the reign of Qianlong, we had the "Soulstealers" scare which derived from these social conditions itself). We also see a trend of downward mobility during this time period.

That sounds like a serious lack of opportunities.

But the population wasn't tied to the land. In the period in question (17-18th century Qing dynasty), the peasantry had been emancipated (though similar to what happened in the south, they remained as sharecroppers) by the Manchus (all classes below the Banners were free and equal, though social status is still enforced).

Tied to the land to survive is just as bad if not worse than serfdom in terms of freeing up people, though.

It does, however. Given just how economically integrated the Chinese economy was at the time, it would indeed become difficult for industrialization to take place, given the profundity and intense competition already present in a vibrant, nationwide cottage industry.

A successful cottage industry is one thing. Not needing to develop factories because you could just trade within China is another.

The bias against merchants is often stated but you're oversimplifying things. Merchants can, without question, wield significant power in society despite their position as an unvirtuous caste of money-grubbers. If you want a literary example, read the Jing Ping Mei for a Ming outlook on merchants, corruption, and social power.

Moreover, the bureaucracy isn't really characterized by autocracy. Indeed, if anything, the bureaucracy served as the restraint on the arbitrary powers of the emperor (such that many emperors were effectively rendered powerless by their advisers and bureaucrats). The Manchus instituted numerous reforms in an effort to take back some power from the bureaucracy for themselves. That being said, the inertia, inefficiency, and corruption in the system in and of itself served to keep the emperor in check (and in some ways, you can characterize the early 2/3rds or more of the 20th century in China as a lack of such a restraint upon the arbitrary powers of the leader).

It's not really whether the bureaucracy is arbitrary, but if the bureaucracy is all-controlling, that determines how autocratic it is - at least for discussion's sake.

The real issue with industrialization during the Qing is as Tito pointed out: the extreme surplus of labor in cities, in rice plantations, and all over; while the trade networks that connected China were indeed extremely efficient, the main reason is that the tremendous population surplus makes industrialization completely irrelevant (since there's no need to improve efficiency: unlike Great Britain, China doesn't have an India to hold as a captive market and force all the surplus goods down into for wealth). Economically, China was experiencing a massive inflow of silver from around the world (from Ming times up until the introduction of Opium).

This is where most states would turn to foreign trade, but China . . . not so much.

Now, if we're talking about Han, Northern/Southern Dynasties, Tang, and Song times, then you might, because such a population pressure doesn't exist (indeed, during the Han, you won't even see any rice cultivation as the South is considered to be dangerous, barbaric lands filled with swamps, cannibals, and wilderness). But you're asking for a classical/post-classical industrial revolution and all that entails, as well as the difficulties of it.

Judging by the reference to Rome, I'm presuming he meant earlier.
 
That sounds like a serious lack of opportunities.
Certainly. Economic competition within China had reached new highs (all units of a family were utilized to produce something for the market, be it the women sewing and producing cloth/silk/clothes/shoes/etc.), arable land became scarcer and scarcer, and the population still boomed thanks to new Columbian crops.

Tied to the land to survive is just as bad if not worse than serfdom in terms of freeing up people, though.
It depends. While functionally, I agree with you, it does also open up the opportunity for migration and movement by the freed peasantry, though it remained a wage slavery, in every sense.

A successful cottage industry is one thing. Not needing to develop factories because you could just trade within China is another.
Both play into it (the cottage industry feeds into village markets, which feeds into the larger economy in question), but the fact that the trading networks were, by the time of the Qing, extremely well developed is certainly another factor to consider. It lead to the development of heavy regional specialization (see porcelain), given how readily such products could be distributed throughout China.

It's not really whether the bureaucracy is arbitrary, but if the bureaucracy is all-controlling, that determines how autocratic it is - at least for discussion's sake.
Point: I was kind of sleepy.

This is where most states would turn to foreign trade, but China . . . not so much.
On the one hand, yes, they didn't force down their products onto others, or actively sought a monopoly on their products. On the other hand, China already was benefiting enormously from trade with the outside world, raking in tremendous amounts of silver imports from the sale of all their luxury goods. It's what sustained the period of "gilded" prosperity during the Qianlong era, for instance.

Judging by the reference to Rome, I'm presuming he meant earlier.
That's where I'm confused, because you two were talking about the Qing dynasty, when these kind of conditions don't exist in a China contemporary to Rome (indeed, the demographic shift to the south hasn't even occurred, yet, rice hasn't been introduced, and the heartland remains on Yellow River, were nuclear families growing grains, soybeans, sorghums, etc. is common). The population boom that is sustained by rice hasn't occurred yet.
 
At what point exactly did I say that cultivation decreased?? On the contrary I said that cultivation had increased to the point that by the 1600s "all arable lands were already under cultivation."





Actually no, the same was true in China. Keep in mind that increased population meant added pressure on land. As I stated earlier by the 1600's all arable lands in China was already under cultivation. That means an increase of peasant labor with nothing to do moved to the cities increasing the size of Chinese urban centers in the late imperial period. Many of them found themselves in the army during wartime, then turning to banditry in peacetime and often as we see in Chinese history, engaging in revolt after revolt. This surplus population flooded China's non agricultural manufacturing base to the point that this increase of non agricultural surplus population cheapened labor wages which again as already stated killed any desire at more efficient manufacturing innovation. You're correct on one point, China had less need of foreign markets because it had enough of its own markets to support the businesses, thus businesses did not see the need to streamline their operations and this had to do with a surplus in non agricultural labor. Simply put China was too big with too many people. This can be fixed if perhaps early China was less sucessful in uniting the various warring states resulting in a balkanized China. Which to me is doable and I'm sure its been proposed here before.

Well, a Warring States Period point-of-divergence is possible, but it's hard to make it work, because by then, all of the major states were aiming to unite China.

Also, your example is from the Qing Dynasty, and I thought you were aiming for Han or Song industrialization, so I mentioned that because those eras were when excess people found new land. What, exactly, are you asking for? A surviving Rome? An industrializing Han? An industrializing Song? All of the above?

I guess you might not explicitly said so regarding the techniques, but you implied it here:
Before the 1600s before all arable lands was under cultivation, whenever the Chinese needed to increase food production, they simply cultivated new areas that were not already being cultivated. After that, the lack of technical progress meant that crop yields became relatively flat, but the population continued to grow.
 
Certainly. Economic competition within China had reached new highs (all units of a family were utilized to produce something for the market, be it the women sewing and producing cloth/silk/clothes/shoes/etc.), arable land became scarcer and scarcer, and the population still boomed thanks to new Columbian crops.

Not a healthy situation. Good at raw population growth, but very bad for either an Industrial Revolution or just a decent standard of living for the average peasant.

It depends. While functionally, I agree with you, it does also open up the opportunity for migration and movement by the freed peasantry, though it remained a wage slavery, in every sense.
True.

Both play into it (the cottage industry feeds into village markets, which feeds into the larger economy in question), but the fact that the trading networks were, by the time of the Qing, extremely well developed is certainly another factor to consider. It lead to the development of heavy regional specialization (see porcelain), given how readily such products could be distributed throughout China.

Yeah. You'd think that would be a good thing, however.

Point: I was kind of sleepy.

No worries, the distinction is worth making.

On the one hand, yes, they didn't force down their products onto others, or actively sought a monopoly on their products. On the other hand, China already was benefiting enormously from trade with the outside world, raking in tremendous amounts of silver imports from the sale of all their luxury goods. It's what sustained the period of "gilded" prosperity during the Qianlong era, for instance.

Yeah. But it was a . . . how to put it . . . passive situation. If, for some reason, foreigners stopped depending on China as a source of X, China making huge profits from X would dry up - Chinese merchants are not competing with others within the marketplaces of the world.

And even while this is working, this is not a system that will produce an Industrial Revolution - riches but not revolutionary changes.

That's where I'm confused, because you two were talking about the Qing dynasty, when these kind of conditions don't exist in a China contemporary to Rome (indeed, the demographic shift to the south hasn't even occurred, yet, rice hasn't been introduced, and the heartland remains on Yellow River, were nuclear families growing grains, soybeans, sorghums, etc. is common). The population boom that is sustained by rice hasn't occurred yet.

Yeah. I messed up on my dates, but I think the earliest that the Chinese Could Have Been An IR is the Song (if it was possible earlier I haven't read anything, but I know the Song are mentioned regularly) - which is early in the rice boom years and rather late in Roman years.

So, at least in part, my bad.

Still, I think China seems economically ill set up for an IR and the population ratio relative to the land is producing less a situation of cheap labor as . . . well, this is my understanding:

That cottage industry plus falling standard of living is strangling the basic commercial developments leading to expanded production of goods. And without more extensive foreign trade - meaning that Chinese textiles aren't flooding any foreign markets (yes, there's silk and so on, but it's not the same as what Britain did with its products, even outside captive markets) - there's nowhere else but the home market.
 
Top